Carwow Taps Airwallex to Streamline Car Marketplace Payments

Payments platform Airwallex is joining forces with British online vehicle marketplace Carwow.

The collaboration, announced Thursday (Jan. 9), allows Carwow to use Airwallex’s services to process payments for dealerships who purchase cars from thousands of private sellers through the company’s online auctions each week.

“We understand that for many of our large dealer partners, despite best intentions, there are many operational hurdles that limit their ability to arrange same-day payment when purchasing cars,” Sally Foote, Carwow’s chief commercial officer, said in a news release.

By integrating with Airwallex, she added, dealers will be able to “quickly, easily and securely process payments when buying cars from private sellers, thus ensuring an even more trusted and convenient way for consumers to sell their cars through Carwow.”

In addition to streamlining payments, the integration also removes “operational hurdles,” the release added, with dealers now agreeing to terms and conditions before being given an Airwallex Account, which will provide account details for dealers “to securely store funds and easily transfer payments to purchase cars.”

In other news from the world of online car buying, PYMNTS looked at Amazon’s efforts to enter that space in an interview with Michael Zakkour, founder and chief strategist at 5 New Digital.

He argued that Amazon is trying to live up to its reputation as “The Everything Store” with the recent launch of Amazon Autos.

“Amazon is banking on consumers’ familiarity and trust in the Amazon platform and seeing all of its features, like reviews and star ratings, applied to the car-buying process,” Zakkour said.

While Walmart has its Carsaver program, that report noted, it mainly serves as a middleman for auto sales without an end-to-end experience. Amazon’s entry into the market gives it a chance to define what it means to buy a car online.

Still, Zakkour noted, the number of online car sales, while growing, is still vastly overshadowed by direct sales at dealerships.

“CarMax, Carvana and Vroom have made solid progress in the used car and B2B car sales spaces, while still not finding a mass audience for new car sales. I expect Amazon to deploy their usual playbook when entering a new category,” he told PYMNTS. “That said, Amazon still has a lot of challenges to overcome, much as they found out with their purchase of Whole Foods and the rollout of Amazon Fresh stores in grocery.”